Valve gobbles up Turtle Rock Studios

You won't be shocked, but Valve has announced the acquisition of Turtle Rock Studios.

The pair were previously working together on impressive co-operative zombie outing Left 4 Dead, in a sort of Valve helps out and distributes it on Steam kind of way.

But evidently it made more sense to bring the Turtles in and add a Southern California office to Valve's repertoire - for parties and things as well as a being a base to expand from.

"Given our expectations for Left 4 Dead and our long-standing relationships with members of the Turtle Rock team, this was an easy decision," said favourite person Gabe Newell, who also does some sort of business work at Valve.

Left 4 Dead is an ambitious and exciting multiplayer project where two teams of up to four people battle each other, one team as four survivors, the other as the Infected, or yucky zombie-like things that want to eat humans. You can also let the AI control the zombies if all your friends are stupid.

It is fast, furious, and overwhelmingly popular, as Tom found out at QuakeCon; watching endless lines of people queue to play it, overlooking star attraction Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

This resulted in us, read: Tom, writing quite a lot about it, which you can eyeball over on our Left 4 Dead gamepage.

Left 4 Dead is due out on PC in the second quarter of 2008, with a 360 version to follow.